Sections

U.S. slaps further sanctions on top Russian officials

U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement on Ukraine at the White House in Washington, DC on March 17, 2014. The United States and Europe aimed sanctions directly at Vladmir Putin's inner circle Monday to punish Russia's move to annex Crimea, deepening the worst East-West rift since the Cold War.Photo: YURI GRIPAS/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama has slapped new financial and travel sanctions on senior Russian government officials in retaliation for the mounting Ukrainian crisis.

The sanctions target seven government officials including Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and two aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin. They stop short of Putin himself.

“Each of the Russian officials sanctioned today played a leading role as an ideologist, a strategist or an architect of the referendum strategy, and is also a leading proponent of formal annexation of Crimea by Russia and has played an active public role both in Russia and in Crimea in supporting and activating the steps that have already been taken,” a senior White House official said during a briefing.

“These are by far the most comprehensive sanctions applied to Russia since the end of the Cold War.”

He said there is “some concrete evidence” that Sunday’s referendum ballots arrived in Crimea “pre-marked” and that 123 per cent of the Sevastopol population would have voted “yes” given the announced numbers.

Obama said in a statement Monday morning that “if Russia continues to interfere in Ukraine, we stand ready to impose further sanctions.”

U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden was scheduled to leave Monday evening for Europe to meet with NATO allies Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Obama said he intends to travel to Europe next week for further consultations.

“As NATO allies, we have a solemn commitment to our collective defence, and we will uphold this commitment,” he said.

The U.S. already has sent jet fighters to help patrol the Baltic states. There is mounting concern in eastern Europe that Russia’s invasion of Crimea and threats to eastern Ukraine could expand to other bordering states that were part of the Soviet Union and still have minority Russian populations, as does Ukraine.

Obama called for Russia to pull its forces in Crimea back to their bases, support the deployment of more international monitors in Ukraine and agree to talks with Ukrainian leaders.

Obama said U.S. moves to use sanctions to isolate Russia and its leaders are guided by “a fundamental principle — the future of Ukraine must be decided by the people of Ukraine. That means Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected, and international law must be upheld.”

The European Union decided Monday to impose similar sanctions on 21 Russian and Ukrainian officials.

The executive order blocks the officials’ assets in the United States, bans their travel to the U.S. and forbids U.S. citizens from doing business with them. Although the sanctions so far are relatively mild, the Russian stock market has declined 14.7 per cent since Feb. 20.

The order also grants the U.S. Treasury Department, in consultation with Secretary of State John Kerry, the power to sanction any Russian government official connected with the arms industry or any person who has “assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support for or goods or services to or in support of” a senior Russian government official.

This essentially would bar foreign banks from assisting Russian officials.

In addition, the order sanctions four Ukrainian leaders, including former president Viktor Yanukovych, for their part in colluding with the Russians by “threatening the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine, and for undermining Ukraine’s democratic institutions and processes.”

Individuals named on Obama’s executive order are:

1. Yelena Mizulina, 60, a Russian Duma deputy and nationalist. With her tightly wound bun and wireless glasses, she has a schoolmarm persona and is Putin’s leading morality and anti-gay champion.

2. Leonid Slutsky, 46, a Russian Duma deputy who is a leader in Russia’s move to establish a “Eurasian union” with former Soviet republics. He is chairman of the committee on the “Commonwealth of Independent States, Eurasian Integration and Links with Compatriots.” He is a member of the far-right LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia).

3. Andrei Klishas, 42, member of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament and chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Law, Judicial and Legal Affairs and the Development of Civil Society.

4. Valentina Ivanovna Matviyenko, 64. Considered the most powerful woman in Russia, she is speaker of the Federation Council. Born in Ukraine, she was the first female governor of St. Petersburg and is a longtime Putin loyalist and a member of Putin’s United Russia Party, the country’s largest political party.

5. Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, 50. Deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation in charge of defence and the defence industry. He is a former ambassador to NATO. He was a co-chairman of the far-right Rodina (Motherland) party. He founded the party with Putin economist Sergei Glazyev, who is one of the original advocates for the Eurasian union and Ukraine’s annexation to Russia. The Motherland party, once criticized for inciting hatred, merged in 2006 with several other nationalist parties to become the Just Russia party.

6. Vladislav Yurievich Surkov, 49. A senior Putin aide, he is a public relations specialist and is considered the architect of Putin’s public persona. He is credited with designing Russia’s “sovereign democracy,” a sort of strongman democracy that he has likened to the administration of former U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt.

7. Sergei Glazyev, 53. Putin adviser and co-founder of the Motherland party, he is the architect of Putin’s Eurasian union, which he sees as a Russian exclusion zone and counter to the European Union. He has authored many books, one of which was called Genocide: Russia and the New World Order. It was translated into English and published in the U.S. by the Lyndon LaRouche magazine Executive Intelligence Review with a preface signed by 91-year-old LaRouche.

2. Viktor Medvedchuk, 59. The lawyer and leader of Ukrainian Choice “assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support to Yanukovych.” A Ukrainian oligarch worth an estimated $450 million, he is leader of the Ukrainian Choice party, which in fact is pro-Russian. Putin is godfather to his daughter Darina.

3. Vladimir Konstantinov, 57, speaker of the Crimean parliament, which on March 11 declared independence from Ukraine. An engineer and former Soviet army officer, he holds the award of “Honoured Builder of Ukraine.” Ukraine police have charged him with treason, claiming he is a “Putin puppet.”

4. Sergei Aksyonov, 41. A member of the Russian Unity party, Aksyonov became prime minister of Crimea after the Russian invasion and has rejected the authority of the government in Kyiv. He led a Crimea parliamentary vote to join Russia and to hold the March 16 referendum to break away from Ukraine. A former Russian Soviet army officer, he faces charges in Ukraine for treason. He has been alleged to be part of Crimean organized crime.